Someone once asked me what I thought horror fiction did. What its purpose was . . . I replied that when I wrote horror fiction, I tried to take the improbable, the unimaginable, and the...

That her niece should find such profound pleasure in the company of a thirteen-year-old black girl–and, more to the point, always within the precincts of Elinor’s house–was a slap in Mary-Love’s face. She decided, without...

Mary-Love liked to see herself as the family cornucopia, dispensing all manner of good things, unstintingly, unceasingly. She considered herself amply rewarded by her children’s gratitude, and if she perceived that her children were not...